FACEBOOK

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 845 million monthly active users.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.
The original idea for the term Facebook came from Zuckerberg’s high school (Phillips Exeter Academy). The Exeter Face Book was passed around to every student as a way for students to get to know their classmates for the following year. It was a physical paper book until Zuckerberg brought it to the internet.
With this success, Zuckerberg, Moskowitz and Hughes moved out to Palo Alto for the summer and rented a sublet. A few weeks later, Zuckerberg ran into the former cofounder of Napster, Sean Parker. Parker soon moved in to Zuckerberg’s apartment and they began working together. Parker provided the introduction to their first investor, Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and managing partner of The Founders Fund. Thiel invested $500,000 into Facebook.
With millions more users, Friendster attempted to acquire the company for $10 million in mid 2004. Facebook turned down the offer and subsequently received $12.7 million in funding from Accel Partners, at a valuation of around $100 million. Facebook continued to grow, opening up to high school students in September 2005 and adding an immensely popular photo sharing feature the next month. The next spring, Facebook received $25 million in funding from Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital, as well as previous investors Accel Partners and Peter Thiel. The pre-money valuation for this deal was about $525 million. Facebook subsequently opened up to work networks, eventually amassing over 20,000 work networks. Finally in September 2006, Facebook opened to anyone with an email address.
In the summer of 2006, Yahoo attempted to acquire the company for $1 billion dollars. Reports actually indicated that Zuckerberg made a verbal agreement to sell Facebook to Yahoo. A few days later when Yahoo’s stock price took a dive, the offer was lowered to $800 million and Zuckerberg walked away from the deal. Yahoo later offered $1 billion again, this time Zuckerberg turned Yahoo down and earned instant notoriety as the “kid” who turned down a billion. This was not the first time Zuckerberg turned down an acquisition offer; Viacom had previously unsuccessfully attempted to acquire the company for $750 million in March 2006.
Not long after, in October 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million into Facebook for 1.6 percent of the company in. This meant a valuation of over $15 billion, making Facebook the 5th most valuable US Internet company, yet with only $150 million in annual revenue. Many explained Microsoft’s decision as being solely driven by the desire to outbid Google.
Facebook continued to receive funding, most notably in January 2011 receiving a $1.5 billion round, valuing the company at $50 billion. A year later, in February 2012, Facebook announced that it was filing for its long-anticipated initial public offering. The company went public on May 18, 2012, opening on the NASDAQ with shares trading at $42.05.
One sour note for Facebook has been the controversy with social network ConnectU. The founders of ConnectU, former classmates of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, allege that Zuckerberg stole their original source code for Facebook. The ordeal has gone to court, and has now been resolved.
Notwithstanding this lingering controversy, Facebook’s growth has been staggering. Facebook announced astonishing numbers in February 2012 upon filing for its IPO. Over 845 million users log into Facebook every month, and 483 million users log in daily. Mobile users now make up half of Facebook’s user base, with 425 million monthly actives. Facebook also announced that by the end of 2011 there had been 100 billion friend connections, and in recent months users had been registering 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day. Facebook is one of the most trafficked sites in the US, and its international growth has been impressive. Additionally, Facebook is the top photo sharing site with 250 million photos uploaded per day.
Facebook users’ passion—or addiction—to the site is unparalleled: more than half use the product every single day and users spend an average of 19 minutes a day on Facebook. The site’s popularity has garnered it pop culture fame, so much so that in 2010 a feature film entitled The Social Network was released which chronicled Facebook’s inception.
In its 2012 IPO filing, Facebook announced that it intends to grow in the near future by expanding its global user base, increasing engagement by developing new social tools, improving the mobile experience, and creating more value for advertisers and users. 

Milestones

• 
  Facebook added Ben Ling as Director of Platform.
  Posted 5/12/12 at 8:23am
• 
  Facebook added Zac Morris as Software Engineer. (3/26/12)
  Posted 5/3/12 at 7:54pm
• 
  Facebook added Brian Amerige as Mobile Software Engineer. (5/7/12)
  Posted 5/2/12 at 12:51am
• 
  Facebook added Douglas Purdy as Director of Product.
  Posted 4/20/12 at 8:36am
• 
  Facebook added Taz Ryder as IT Specialist. (10/4/07)
  Posted 4/6/12 at 4:19pm
• 
  Facebook added Yishan Wong as Director, Engineering. (12/1/05)
  Posted 3/28/12 at 7:03am
• 
  Facebook added Rushi Desai as Software Engineer. (4/3/12)
  Posted 3/25/12 at 6:39pm
• 
  Facebook added Ding Zhou as Tech Lead. (1/1/08)
  Posted 3/6/12 at 10:22pm
• 
  Facebook added Alison Rosenthal as Business Development, Mobile. (1/1/06)
  Posted 2/27/12 at 7:24am
• 
  Facebook added Scott Marlette as Product Manager Photos. (1/1/05)
  Posted 2/22/12 at 4:49pm
• 
  Facebook added Brandon Sayles as Sales and Advertising.
  Posted 2/9/12 at 9:39am
• 
  Facebook added Randy Neals as Global Network Planning. (8/29/11)
  Posted 2/6/12 at 2:42am
• 
  Facebook added Lincoln Hochberg as Software Engineer. (10/1/10)
  Posted 1/30/12 at 10:09pm
• 
  Facebook added Charles Dowd as Developer Relations. (5/24/10)
  Posted 12/29/11 at 2:55am
• 
  Facebook added Niranjan Nagar as Strategic Partner Manager, Games. (6/1/11)
  Posted 12/3/11 at 8:28am
• 
  Facebook added Charles Jolley as Mobile. (11/1/11)
  Posted 11/15/11 at 10:28pm

Videos

Screenshots

Above: Facebook Screenshot -- #1
Uploaded: 4/28/09

Products

Facebook Chat

Facebook Connect

Facebook Lite

Facebook Mobile

Facebook News Feed

Facebook Places

Facebook Platform

Facebook Zero

Stock Price

View the full NASDAQ:FB chart at Wikinvest

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Sources

1. Citation Needed []
2. Facebook Buys Location-Based Discovery App Glancee (techcrunch.com) []
3. Facebook Ups The Mobile Ante Again; Buys Mobile Loyalty, Rewards Startup TagTile (techcrunch.com) []
4. TechCrunch: Facebook Buys Instagram For $1 Billion, Turns Budding Rival Into Its Standalone Photo App (techcrunch.com) []
5. Facebook Acquires GazeHawk; Green Dot Acquires Loopt (mountainview.patch.com) []
6. Facebook acquires team behind YC alum Caffeinated Mind (venturebeat.com) []
7. Report: Facebook Has Acquired Gowalla (techcrunch.com) []
8. Facebook Acquires The Tech Behind WhoGlue, A Company That Sued It In 2009 (techcrunch.com) []
9. Facebook Acquires HTML5 App Delivery Network Strobe; SproutCore Lives On (techcrunch.com) []
10. Facebook Acq-hires Mobile Video And Image Editing App Developer Digital Staircase (techcrunch.com) []
11. techcrunch.com []
12. Confirmed: Facebook Acquires Snaptu (For An Estimated $60 – $70 Million) (techcrunch.com) []
13. Facebook Buys Digital Bookmaking Service Push Pop Press (techcrunch.com) []
14. Facebook Acquires Sofa (madebysofa.com) []
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18. Facebook Buys Yet Another NYC Startup -- Why Doesn't It Just Open An Engineering Office Here Already? (businessinsider.com) []
19. Facebook Acquires Drop.io, Nabs Sam Lessin (techcrunch.com) []
20. Facebook Acquires Social Travel Recommendation Site Nextstop (techcrunch.com) []
21. Facebook Makes Another ‘Acq-Hire’ Chai Labs; Deal Estimated At $10 Million (paidcontent.org) []
22. mashable.com []
23. Facebook Acquires Divvyshot to Improve Facebook Photos (techcrunch.com) []
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25. Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (techcrunch.com) []
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27. fbFund (marlenevergaraborquez.com) [edit]
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30. Jim Breyer: Extra $500 Million Round For Facebook A “Total Fiction” (techcrunch.com) []
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33. Facebook gets $60M from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (venturebeat.com) []
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35. Updated: Facebook Investor Li Ka-Shing Upping Stake To $120 Million: Report (paidcontent.org) []
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37. Facebook Takes That $200 Million Investment From The Russians At A $10 Billion Valuation. (techcrunch.com) []
38. Elevation Invests Another $120 Million in Facebook as that IPO Looks More Distant (techcrunch.com) []
39. Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion (prnewswire.com) []
Facebook adds comments to the Mini-Feed. It’s like FriendFeed is looking in the mirror (venturebeat.com) []
The fbFund Gives Out Cash To 25 Facebook Developers (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Movie Poster Announces 500 Million Facebook Users Before Facebook Does (techcrunch.com) []
By the way, Facebook for iPhone has 57.8 million monthly active users. (Versus 8,810 for the Microsoft Kin.) (businessinsider.com) []
Zuckerberg Makes It Official: Facebook Hits 500 Million Members (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook To Begin Giving Y Combinator Startups VIP Treatment (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Donates $100 Million To Fix Newark New Jersey Public Schools (businessinsider.com) []
Facebook, KPCB Announce $250 Million Social Networking Fund (businessinsider.com) []
200 Million People Use Facebook Mobile – Up 3X From Last Year (businessinsider.com) []
Facebook Acquired FB.com From The American Farm Bureau To Use Internally (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Connect: 250 million monthly users, adding 10,000 sites every day (bgr.com) []
Facebook Shares Hit $28.26 Per Share, That’s a $70+ Billion Valuation (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Users Uploaded A Record 750 Million Photos Over New Year’s (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Considering A Leaseback Deal Worth As Much As $420 Million For New HQ (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Teams With Snaptu To Launch Rich App For Feature Phones (techcrunch.com) []
Kevin Rose Invests In Facebook On SecondMarket (techcrunch.com) []
Wow. Just… Wow: Facebook Hits Record $75 Billion Valuation On SecondMarket (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Now Has 250 Million Mobile Users (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Buys Sofa, A Software Design Team That Will Help Make Facebook More Beautiful (techcrunch.com) []
Zuck Confirms That Facebook Now Has 750 Million Active Users (techcrunch.com) []
GSV Capital Buys Facebook Stock At $70 Billion Valuation; Its Own Stock Pops 21 Percent (techcrunch.com) []
Report: Facebook Revenue Was $1.6B In First Half Of 2011, Net Income $500M (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook acquires team behind YC alum Caffeinated Mind (venturebeat.com) []
Facebook Buys AOL Patents From Microsoft For $550 Million In Cash (techcrunch.com) []
Facebook Will Have The Biggest Tech IPO Ever, Raising $16 Billion With $38 Share Price (techcrunch.com) []      View the original article here